You can be one or the other but you can’t be both any more than you can be half pregnant.

And it’s time we stopped indulging those politicians, especially on the conservative side of the argument, who pretend you can.

This is why I praised Nigel Farage for his sensible response at the weekend to a climate change question by a BBC interviewer.

BBC apparatchik Andrew Marr asked:

“Do you still believe that worrying about global warming is the stupidest thing in human history?”

Farage replied:

“I believe that if we decide in this country to tax ourselves to the hilt, to put hundreds of thousands of people out of work in manufacturing industries, given that we produce less than 2 per cent of global CO2, that isn’t terribly intelligent.”

When was the last time we heard such sense from a leading British Conservative politician? Sure, I’m aware that on the backbenches there are a few MPs like Owen Paterson – formerly the Environment Secretary – who understand that ‘climate change’ is the biggest scientific fraud – and arguably the worst case of government waste – in history.

But why aren’t we hearing it from any of the leading contenders to replace Theresa May as Prime Minister?

It’s a measure of just how ideologically frivolous, how out of touch with the party base, how out of touch with reality that the Conservative government has grown that none of its senior figures is capable of articulating – or, apparently, even understanding – what the intelligent and proper conservative position should be on climate change.

And it doesn’t even require them to address the fraught issue of “the science,” which is far too complicated to address in a sound bite and is, therefore, best avoided.

That’s what was canny about Farage’s response – which is also, incidentally, the Donald Trump response: treat it as a question about practicality and about economics.

On the practicality front, as Farage implied, even if Britain were to decarbonise its entire economy it would still only shave off two per cent of global manmade CO2 emissions and therefore would be self-sacrificial and pointless.

On the economics front, climate change intervention means higher taxes and fewer jobs – neither of which any self-respecting Conservative administration should be championing.

But the Conservatives are still trying to live out David Cameron’s ‘greenest government ever’ fantasy. (Anyone remember David Cameron or know what became of him, btw?)

They actually imagine that – true to their spirit of their mentor Tony Blair – climate change is another of those issues on which they can triangulate.

A recent article in the Spectator by a senior adviser from the Energy and Environment Unit from the Conservatives’ favourite think tank Policy Exchange captures perfectly the fatuousness of their delusion.

Then you read it and realise – nah, it’s actually just more turd-polished socialism he’s advocating.

It’s really about time that the Conservatives stopped trying to please the BBC and the Guardian and similar institutions which will always hate them, regardless – and wake up to what’s actually going on.

Real damage is being done right now to Britain, its people, its economy, its integrity, its landscape, its wildlife and its future prospects by misguided climate change policy.

And it’s time that Conservatives paid less attention to David Attenborough’s tendentious bleatings and a bit more to the fact-driven postings of Britain’s most dedicated skewer of environmentalist myth: the great Paul Homewood.

Homewood deserves to be made the equivalent of a Hero of the Soviet Union for his Stakhanovite output.

The plenitude of his posts gives an idea of the scale of the problem and also of the degree to which climate propaganda is infecting every nook and cranny of our daily lives.

Let me sum up a few of his recent posts:

Climate Change Killing Frogs, Say BBC.
BBC quotes researcher claiming climate change is killing British frogs and demanding action be taken to “reverse human-driven climate change”. In fact, all the scientific evidence suggests that the ‘ranavirus’ was the result of human activity, probably importing frogs and fish.

Guardian Lauds Coal Free Week- But Forgets To Mention Gas Supplied 49%!‘Britain has gone a week without using coal to generate electricity for the first time since Queen Victoria was on the throne,” crows the Guardian. Yes, but at the cost of higher prices, more imported energy – and with fossil fuel gas and nuclear still propping up the bulk of Britain’s energy economy.

Scientists in Cambridge plan to set up a research centre to develop new ways to repair the Earth’s climate.

It will investigate radical approaches such as refreezing the Earth’s poles and removing CO2 from the atmosphere.

And rightly so. As he points out, the scientists pushing this scheme – Peter Wadhams (who lost all credibility on his predictions that Arctic ice would have vanished by now) and Sir David King – have a terrible track record on climate. It’s also worth asking: who is funding this nonsense? The taxpayer presumably.

The sample gives a snapshot of just how heavily watermelon politics – green on the outside, red on the inside – have penetrated our culture. Academic institutions have been suborned, our energy supply system has been corrupted, liberty (such as our freedom to fly as often as we wish) is being curtailed, the very fabric of nature is being tampered with, our state media is churning out the kind of relentless propaganda more normally associated with totalitarian regimes.

Environmentalism, in short, poses the most massive threat to our freedoms, the integrity of our institutions, our standard of living, our environment. And instead of standing up to it, our political class — even Conservatives who should know better — is saying to the minority of rabid eco-loons promoting this poisonous ideology “What more can we do to abase ourselves and meet your every perverted need?”

Environmental scepticism should not be an optional extra for any prospective leader hoping to steer Britain out of the mess it’s currently in towards a bright, independent, prosperous post-Brexit future.

And I’m damned if I’m going to support any candidate who doesn’t get it.

Conservatives are conservationists. But that’s not the same as being environmentalists. Environmentalism is a political philosophy which has almost nothing to do with saving the environment.

Farage and the Brexit Party (at least most of it: I have my doubts about that special forces guy) get this. So do Gerard Batten and UKIP. But the Conservatives don’t and I’ve had quite enough of their stupid games. Unless they start talking sense on this issue, they fully deserve the electoral oblivion that is fast coming their way.